This blog will present news items about the motion picture business, with emphasis on lower budget, independent film in most cases. Some reviews or commentaries on specific films, with emphasis on significance (artistic or political) or comparison, are presented. Note: No one pays me for these reviews; they are not "endorsements"!

About Me

Since the 1990s I have been very involved with fighting the military "don't ask don't tell" policy for gays in the military, and with First Amendment issues. Best contact is 571-334-6107 (legitimate calls; messages can be left; if not picked up retry; I don't answer when driving) Three other url's: doaskdotell.com, billboushka.com johnwboushka.com Links to my URLs are provided for legitimate content and user navigation purposes only.
My legal name is "John William Boushka" or "John W. Boushka"; my parents gave me the nickname of "Bill" based on my middle name, and this is how I am generally greeted. This is also the name for my book authorship. On the Web, you can find me as both "Bill Boushka" and "John W. Boushka"; this has been the case since the late 1990s. Sometimes I can be located as "John Boushka" without the "W." That's the identity my parents dealt me in 1943!

Monday, July 07, 2014

Denish D'Souza presents "America: Imagine a World without Her": He dissects the Left-wing "shame argument against US capitalism, then honors Aaron Swartz

“America: Imagine a World without Her” is Denish D’Souza’s
follow-up to the 2012 film “2016: Obama’s America”. D’Souza has maintained that the former film
motivated a selective prosecution of him in 2014, for making a political
campaign contribution in the names of others. (The imdb title is only "America").

D’Souza takes on a summary left-wing mantra, that America is
living off of stolen power and wealth.
That argument would put individual Americans in the shameful position of
living off of stolen desserts, a position which, as D’Souza notes, has led some
extremists to say that even as individuals, some 9/11 victims got what they
deserved.

D’Souza takes on the “shame” problem at a high level. He notes this argument comes from Howard Zinn’s
“A People’s History of the United States”, mentioned by Matt Damon’s character
in the 1996 movie “Good Will Hunting” as well as in “The Sopranos”. It’s reinforced by other notables on the
Left, like Noam Chomsky, Michael Moore, and (“A Fighting Chance”) Elizabeth
Warren (all of whom are personally well off).
D’Souza presents Barack Obama as saying “what you have, you didn’t make
on your own.” Now, that could mean you
should pay more taxes (perhaps through coercive confiscation or revolutionary expropriation), or it could mean (as in many faith-based environments)
you should become more involved in personally taking care of others.

D’Souza starts with the charge that America stole land from
native Americans, by interviewing a Sioux at Mt. Rushmore, who sees the
monument as a scar. He moves to the
taking of most of the American Southwest from Mexico. Both of these he dismisses by reporting that
the native Americans and Mexicans simply had taken land from one another by
force. America added economic innovation
and adding of value. He notes that
sometimes radical Islam maintains that violence is more “manly” than the use of
money and capital. (Hitler also
maintained such, that some people were born more “worthy to live.”) He then looks at slavery and segregation,
essentially maintaining that America admitted it’s mistakes and fixed them with
the War Between the States and Civil Rights Movement. He defends against critics of American “imperialism”
to “steal resources” by pointing out that America returns territory and
rebuilds resources. And he defends
capitalism with more typical Ayn Rand arguments.

Finally, he gives his account of the education of Hillary
Clinton, with the influence of left-wing organizer Saul Alinsky. And as a bonus, he moves into the NSA scandal
(pre-Snowden), and gives some coverage to the tragic story of Aaron Swartz (“The
Internet’s Own Boy”, June 22), pointing out that JSTOR had been developed from
tax-supported efforts. He didn’t mention
the fact that JSTOR mattered to teen researcher Jack Andraka, but that would
have made an nice add-on.

D'Souza makes a specific statement in favor of personal autonomy or individual sovereignty as a moral principle. This film is more pro-individualism, even hyper-individualism, than just pro American. It would seem to encourage political libertarianism. He doesn't get into how inequality (and luck, misfortune, or hidden dependency) should play out at the individual "karma" level.

The filmmaking is interesting. D’Souza recreates many moments in history,
going back to the Revolutionary War, with actors, in a manner common in museum
films (he opens with a hypothetical scene where George Washington is shot, to
set up the “what it”.)

The official site is here. The film is distributed by Lionsgate (no
Roadside Attractions this time), a studio that lately has been “going bigger”. John Sullivan co-directed and co-wrote the
film, which is based on D'Souza's book by the same name (Regnery publishing). .

I saw this film at Regal Potomac Yards in Alexandria, before
a small audience. This older complex has
converted to digital and looks sharp, but the movie server failed a couple of
times, becoming garbled with the video going blank, as if it were
overheated. The theater showed its dirty
laundry (a Microsoft desktop recovery app).
So it took over two hours to get through the 100-minute film.

Update: Oct. 8, 2014

D'Souza has his real detractors, well within the conservative communities. Look at the analysis of his book "The Enemy at Home: The Cultural Left and its Responsibility for 9/11" in National Review, by Victor Davis Hanson, article "The Mind of Mr. D'Souza", 2007,link. And today, on Vox, Dylan Matthews wrote a blistering article "Dinesh D'Souza, America's Greatest Conservative Troll, Explained", here. The article does go into a prosecution of the author, and the uncertainty that he will serve much of a sentence. As for his views: true, on colonialism and slavery, the idea that "everybody did it" didn't make it right. My own father once said that the importation of slaves shortly after colonization was the greatest mistake in American history.

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